World War Z, Moo

I should first mention that these two books have absolutely nothing in common as far as subject matter is concerned. Max Brooks' World War Z (An Oral History of the Zombie War)is a futuristic story about what would happen if our world suffered an infestation of zombies, while Moo, by Jane Smiley, is a satirical but also at times kind-hearted story about the sins and redemptions of a small university community. You might say that the only thing these two books have in common is that I read them at the same time. This was because I am absolutely terrified of zombies ever since seeing the movie 28 Days Later, and I couldn't read World War Z before bed or any other time when I was likely to be nervous about things. Moo was very calming to read, while WWZ was thrilling and mesmerizing.

Actually, though, one other thing the two books do have in common is the use of a pastiche technique, one story made up of many different people's points of view. They are both trying to use the juxtaposition of limited perspectives to give a sense of total perspective, and that is fairly cool.

I have thought quite a lot about what underlies zombie stories, what psychological condition they are meant to grip (and chew) on. I decided that zombie stories are to a great extent about alienation: the feeling that there are people out there who look like me but who cannot be understood through analogy to myself; their actions are detrimental to my interests; they cannot be reasoned with; and--as things get worse--anyone, even my nearest and dearest, can get like this. Almost all zombie stories seem to have two major elements, first the metamorphosis of formerly close companions into zombifies, and second, the realization that (as conditions worsen) non-zombies become as deadly as zombies. Zombie stories are therefore an interesting example of something that contains both the symbol and the thing it's supposed to symbolize (I mean just in case you missed it, y'know?). Knowing the formula and recognizing its heavy-handedness doesn't make these stories less scary to me however!

WWZ's spin on the formula is interesting because what the author is clearly interested in is an allegory of global politics: nations responding to the crisis in ways that are characteristic of them. A further underlying significance of the zombie threat was also the problem of overpopulation. I'm not sure the author consciously meant that, but it makes some of the scenes more chilling if one uses "zombie" as a symbol for "undesirable excess population." (In 28 Days Later the formula could be summarized as "zombie" = "irrational violence".) Overall, though, the book haunted me only about a tenth as much as 28 Days Later did. Maybe it's not having to actually see all the nastiness.

As for Moo, it had its downside in that it descended into a certain amount of stereotyping. On the other hand, the interactions among partially stereotypical characters were often funny and unexpected. There were so many balls being juggled that I didn't really mind them not having all that many individual features. The book portrayed academia as a system that is basically broken but manages to limp along because some of its parts work very well (like the all-powerful secretary to the Provost, Mrs. Walker), well enough to (just barely) compensate for those parts that work really badly. Most people, including the students, just do their jobs in a mediocre and ordinary sort of way, occasionally rising above their ordinary selves to do something better. (And occasionally sinking lower.) The end result is that most wickedness gets some punishment, and most goodness gets some kind of small reward. But it happens in such a muddling way!

I wonder if academia is really like that? Well, even if it is I probably will only ever have the kind of partial view most of the characters in Moo do, so I suppose I won't have to worry overmuch about it!